Posted by tourdemars to Technology at May 14, 2004 12:58 PM

fSONA Communications’ co-founder and Chief Scientist, Dr. Stephen Mecherle recently assisted a NASA team preparing to launch a mission to Mars in 2009 that will attempt to demonstrate laser-based communications between the Earth and Mars. The Mars Laser Communications Demonstration Project is a joint project between NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (JPL), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory (MIT/LL). By using free-space optics technology to communicate with the Mars Telecom Orbiter (MTO) the MLCD project will demonstrate a technology which will vastly improve NASA’s ability to communicate throughout the solar system.